The Chrysalis
by Zagzagael
Summary: Response to WIKTT Wizengamot Challenge
1. Default Chapter

He is crouched before me, his face pressed against my knees and I watch helplessly as his shoulders shake under the terrible weight I have placed upon them. I reach out, stroke the raven hair and with a strange foreboding feel the curve of the skull beneath.

I murmur softly to him now, "_shh__, Child, shh." There are no more words. I am mute. I want to take him into my arms as I had longed to over two decades ago, he the prodigal son returned. I know he would allow it this morning, having denied me such an embrace all these years. But I will leave him his hard worn dignity. _

We argued ourselves hoarse and the end result was _will over power_. I wish it were so more often. There is a teaching in that. He wanted, nay needed, to press me on how long I have known this truth. Has this role been marked upon him for these twenty-two years? I could not bear to tell him how I perceive it. He asked me why there is so much religiosity in it. I could not answer that because I do not know. It feels sacrosanct, to each one of us. And he laughed without humour, the laugh of a man balanced upon the precipice of his own sanity. He believes that to consecrate what we are going to do grants Tom Riddle with far more than the monster is deserving. _Do not name him that! He cried. _He is not that!_ He shouted. _

And then he shuddered, and the first hairline crack appeared.

This is what finally breaks him. For nearly three decades I have wondered how it would look, what it would be, whom it would touch. Unlike others, I never expected him to shatter, but this agonizing splitting and cracking is not what I imagined either.

He has come to me alone; the boy and the girl are somewhere else together no doubt trying to breathe courage. But between us, it is an exchange, it has always been thus. Now he takes strength and I take humility.

He stands and we cannot bear to look into one another's eyes. He bends towards me and I feel him press his thin, dry lips against my freshly shaved scalp. I hand him my wand. He turns and walks under the veil of the new day, the hour of sunrise.

I am past any need for sleep, but I do close my eyes and feel. Hogwarts has become a reliquary. 

~***~

Harry had one hand under her elbow, his grip firm and she relished him his steadiness. Hermione looked sideways at him, his profile still boyish at twenty-three, his glasses perpetually sliding down his nose, and the black hair sloppy, untamed. Sensing the movement of her head he looked down at her. She winced at the openness of his face, the concern written there and in that moment she felt the great love she held for him swell within her. She did love him. He was the brother she chose, as was Ron. She smiled at him, he hesitated a moment, he never did believe her when she feigned bravery, and then returned her smile. 

They could hear Ron and Arthur whispering angrily behind them in the hallway. 

When they had arrived at the Ministry, twenty minutes before, Hermione stayed very close to the wall. Harry had been tight-lipped on their journey down, eyes focused somewhere in front of him. But he had felt her distress, understood her panic. He came close to her, matching her step for step, shielding her with his own body, his bigger presence. And she had been left blissfully alone with him standing between her and the world. 

She had lost so much by the end of the war, but this morning it was the loss of her confidence that ached, a battlefield amputation. 

The first week following that last day had been hour after hour after hour of pain. Headmaster Dumbledore's sacrifice had destroyed her. She screamed until she screamed herself empty and then was silent until her silence filled her and the pain was pushed out and only the images remained. Living through the last day of his life had scorched her very soul, had ripped the eyelids from her mind. She could not look away. She saw and heard and remembered. Seven weeks now, and she could finally hold the images at the peripheral edge of her existence.

She glanced sideways at Harry. He looked so tired, drained; she assumed that they all did. He wore his hero status stiffly, like a burial suit. Glowering at any unfamiliar face that approached him with an awed and presumptuous countenance, it was only upon strained and emotional soul-baring that he relented and exchanged a few empty words with a fellow survivor.

The door to the Wizengamot opened with a stern groan. A wizard in dress robes stood silently aside and they filed past him and into the cavernous space. For one wild moment, Hermione thought that the gathered witches and wizards were going to stand and applaud their entrance. Harry squared his shoulders and ducked his chin down against his chest. She knew he had imagined such a thing as well. They allowed themselves to be led to seats and they sat. Hermione kept her face composed, looking forward. 

He had not been brought in yet.

She did not trust herself to see him. She shook her head in a quick movement of dismissal and the heavy plait of hair that fell down her back brushed against her shoulder like a lover's caress and she groaned aloud. _Oh, gods. His incarceration strangled her, it filled her lungs with grief and she could not breathe._

The stern looking wizard in the deep red robes stood and with a throat clearing cough he intoned, very loudly, his words echoing around the cavernous room, "Bring in the accused traitor and political assassin, Severus Snape."


	2. Two

We are a quadrilateral of responsibilities. She does not know her role as of yet, but she will before two months are gone, counting the days on her fingers. 

She and I can still gaze upon each other, her innocence makes her fearless. Her heart is like a deep well from which she pulls up buckets of love and ladles it out to each one of us. I drink deeply of what she offers. 

I stand now. It is time. Harry is crying softly, openly. I watch Severus square his shoulders and from some newly uncovered part of himself portion out empathy and understanding for the young man. I smile, that is good. Let him soften towards Potter. 

Hermione walks towards me with her hands outstretched and I take them each in my own. Her hands are warm and I know mine are cold and bony. I see the reflection of myself within her eyes, the unshed tears refracting the image of a thin old man, head shaved, face shaved, stripped to the waist. Then I take off my spectacles and hand them to her, she folds them into the pocket of her robe, leans in and kisses me on each cheek and chastely on the mouth. I know she is whispering something to me, but I am no longer in the realm of spoken language.

She moves to his side. And I marvel at this. But my time to ponder such machinations of the human experience is behind me. 

Then Harry is in my arms, the young man a boy in my presence. I wish that for him, for him I wish that I could have been more than I was.

~***~

He was determined to walk into the Wizengamot in his own interminable style. Once they had arrived from Azkaban, he did not allow them to touch him again. They sullenly acquiesced and led him through the torch-lit hallway. They had put their hands on him enough. He was done with it. 

His hands were magically bound behind his back and he was dressed in a yellow tunic and pants, the colour of betrayal. They had shaved his head in denunciation and were left bewildered and blindingly angry when he smirked at them through tears. They knocked out one of his front teeth that night. They had taunted him with food and drink. And they called themselves civilized and spat the word apostate at him. 

He was far too thin now for his tall frame. His head stubbled black like the beard that defined his angular face. A broken tooth and today the black eye. But his haughty demeanor painted his bruised face with a glossy sheen of strength and pride. Seven long weeks, forty-nine days and forty-nine nights, each hour etched upon his brain as crudely as his warders had etched the imprints of their fists and their abusive magic into his flesh. And all for naught, he bid defiance. 

The Dementors had been banished eight years before; Snape knew though that the impersonal nature of their imprisonment would have been far easier for him to bear than the untold numerous personalities of his current jailers. Each gaoler had brought an agenda and vendetta into his cell, into his body, prying into his mind. And not a one of them had been able to unlock a single secret. But that had not kept them from trying. He grimaced. _Fools._ Amazing to watch how quickly their ineptitude, their impotence, their inability to gut him, had enraged them. Just the night before he had been pummeled by a man, whose name for the life of him he could not remember, but who he knew had been a Hogwarts student. And now his eye was swollen shut under the man's brutality.

They hated him, he smiled to himself. _So bloody what?_ His disgust with the entire wizarding population had not changed one whit with his imprisonment. If anything, he felt more disgusted and dismayed. Theirs was a predictability he found repugnant. Even Arthur Weasely, who had come to see him twice, had been predictable in his frustration and anger at Snape's inability to cooperate. 

Yet, part of him yearned to be understood. He was not contrite, not remorseful, not confessing, he was lonely. Half his life had been spent in a precise and intentional misunderstanding, but Dumbledore had known. Snape felt utterly alone now. He knew she could not come to him. He knew the other would not come. Their destinies had been wrenched out of the hands of The Fates for this piece of time. Albus Dumbledore had insured the reins would be handed to human drivers, albeit a temporary arrangement, but one that was sending him careening into a solid wall of assumptions. 

Snape had tried to speak with Minerva, written and been allowed to send her cryptic missives, but she had not responded.

They had turned on him. All of them. Today they would bring closure to their drama. His nature feared the unknown, and this morning he knew nothing. He felt a small fear coil in his belly and twist and turn through his guts. He assumed that this would be their mockery of a Wizengamot. They were going to put him on trial for his role in Albus's death.

He shook his head, _how had it come to this?_ He knew the answer. Knew that only three other human beings knew the answer. And one of them, of course, was dead.

The door opened, his name echoed through the threshold and down the dim corridor. He would not succumb to tunnel vision, he would have this experience. He stared straight ahead, observing the familiar room. The benches rising nearly to the ceiling, filled with witches and wizards, all of whom he knew in one capacity or another. He was directed to the single chair that stood accusingly in the middle of the room. He wanted to laugh aloud at this barbaric travesty, but swallowed it back. He sat and his arms twisted at an uncomfortable angle behind him. His dark eyes roved the front row and he took in the sight of Fudge, and Percy Weasley, Arthur and Ron, Harry and then he saw her. 

From inside his caul he saw her. She looked lost. He felt a tremor of some indefinable emotion shudder through him. If she was lost, well then so was he.


	3. Three

I am standing before him now. It has been so many years since I have seen his true face. The face he was born with, not the face he has created for himself. The creature he has built from the bone, blood and bile of others, from the fear, pain and death of others; this creature has rid itself of Tom Riddle's face. A human ecdysis.

I find myself wanting to weep for the boy who shed himself. But this creature feeds on such emotion and would suck me into uselessness. I must think of the others. I must play my role and render a space in time, slow the clock so that the seconds freeze. I must become Eternity.

I see him twirl my wand between his palms. But he will not use it, does not dare to use my own wand against me. He sees me looking and he holds it out and snaps my life's precious instrument in two. I wince. I sense his gathered minions grow restless with this breaking. The energy they exude is sickening and I swallow back the rising bile.

I watch him ponder and weigh, he understands the dilemma, he has wanted nothing more than this moment and now it is his moment and the power of it is intoxicating him. 

I gather into my core, call all the power that has been my life into the whirlwind of my self and I stand in the eye of this formidableness. For this, perhaps, I was born. For this I will die.

I see his caution, watch his eyes narrow. He wants to strike me with his fists. He will not use magic to destroy me. He now understands that his darkling skill is not enough. Not enough. 

He flies at me, a broken piece of my wand in each fist, he drives the pieces deep into my body and then they are all upon me. Unloosed by the release of my blood. None dare to touch me with their hands; none dare to raise a wand against me. Instead I feel a boot in my back and I am down.

In this ruination comes their undoing. The three are there. The curses cast. The moment stretches into forever.

~***~

Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, rose briskly to his feet. He was shaken to his core at the sight of Snape's injured face, his starvation, but more than that his nobility. This was not what he had been told to expect. He wanted to look around the Wizengamot and single out the wizards and witches who had insisted upon this trial. He wanted to remove himself and go back to his office upstairs. He wanted Severus Snape out of his presence, back in Azkaban, permanently ensconced in the stasis of imprisonment. 

Nothing was as it should be anymore. Albus dead, Voldemort dead, the war over. And yet there were still no answers. No happy ever after. In his darkest moments he wondered if he looked as big a fool as he felt. The feeling of foolishness seemed to engulf him in a sticky constriction. He could not break free of it. But he wore his official face regardless and he stood and pondered the situation for a moment, letting his features harden, before clearing his throat.

"Assassīnus and trāditiō trial of Severus Snape on this, the twenty-eighth of September. Judiciary hearing into offenses of political treason and assassination leading to the betrayal and murder of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore on August twelfth." The court clerk took notes, head down, studiously. "Interrogators:  Cornelius Oswald Fudge, Minister of Magic, Amelia Susan Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Percy Ignatius Weasley, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister." Fudge looked over to where Arthur Weasley sat with his youngest son, Potter and Granger, and nodded.

Arthur stood and opened his mouth to speak, but Harry rose beside him and interrupted, a hand on Arthur's shoulder and a hand on Hermione's shoulder, "Witnesses for the defense, Harry Potter, Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Hermione Granger, Arithmancy Professor Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Fudge narrowed his eyes in dangerous contemplation. He looked from Harry to Hermione and then with a quick flash of white, he looked at Snape from the corners of his eyes.  He turned his profile away from the seated witches and wizards and glowered out from under his still lowered brows. He reached for the lone parchment on the table in front of him, picked it up and read aloud.

"The charges against the accused are as follows:  That he being a Death Eater for twenty-five years, acted under the direct order and compulsion of Voldemort and accosted his employer and benefactor, Albus Dumbledore on the night of August 11th. He kidnapped the victim, overcame him with the use of physical torture and presented his wand to Voldemort to gain favor. He then brought the victim to Voldemort where he participated in the killing of said victim."

Severus stared at Fudge throughout this accusation. His mouth set in a fine and firm line. His eyes betraying nothing.

"How plead you to these charges, Severus Snape?" Fudge sneered.

Snape shook his head.

Fudge sat down a bit too heavily and propped both elbows on the table in front of him, drumming his fingertips against one another and looked at the man before him. "Did you kill Albus Dumbledore?"

Snape shook his head again.

"Did you deliver Albus Dumbledore to Lord Voldemort?"

"Yes."

The courtroom gasped collectively. Fudge smiled.

"When you delivered Dumbledore to Voldemort, where you acting upon a command from your Dark Lord?"

Snape shook his head.

"Were you a Death Eater, Snape?"

"I was."

"And were you acting as a Death Eater when you kidnapped and tortured Albus Dumbledore?"

Snape shook his head.

Susan Bones leaned forward, "This court tires of your refusal to speak, Snape. For seven weeks we have waited for your testimony. We can sentence you based upon our own conclusions and eyewitness accounts. And we may be prepared to do this."

Harry leapt to his feet, "Eyewitness accounts? What eyewitness accounts?"

Silence descended upon the room. The skin of Fudge's face mottled into angry red blotches and his hands scrabbled over the tabletop. Bones face crumpled and she sat back with a feminine grunt. Percy jumped to his feet and pointed a shaking finger at Harry.

Harry moved with a speed that made even Snape flinch. In less than s single stride he was in front of Percy, his hands grabbing great handfuls of the other man's robes, pulling him nearly off his feet, yanking him towards him, and they were nose to nose and yet Harry's voice rang clear, "There were no eyewitnesses other than myself, Hermione and Snape. And there are no eyewitness accounts." 

He shoved him and watched as Percy caught his balance and began smoothing the front of his clothing, face drained white. Harry turned to Bones, "You tire of Snape not testifying? You mean you tire of not being able to beat a confession out of him?" Bones began to answer but Harry was shaking his head and holding an open palm up at her. He began to walk across the floor in front of the benches. He pointed at a witch in a middle row, "You're tired, too, Irmelda?" He pointed at a wizard behind her, "And you, Walter? How is your son's career by the way, Potions Master at that school in the American South was it? Snape wrote him a letter of recommendation just two years back, didn't he? You're tired; you're ready to sentence Professor Snape?" The wizard looked down at his hands. Harry let his gaze linger on another wizard, "Are you ready to sentence Professor Snape, too, Gamon? I hope Jenise can make seeker for Slytherin this year, without her Head of House there to lend the moral support we all see now that she needs." 

Harry stopped his pacing in front of Cornelius Fudge, he leaned on the table and bent over it, bringing his face down to the level of the minister, "Are you getting tired, too, Fudge? Feeling a little wand happy, wanting to cast an Avada Kedavra, are you? Is that going to make it all better? Let you sleep at night without having to quaff bucket loads of the dreamless sleep? You want to put all this behind you, seal the parchments, close the book, burn the body. Be done with it?"

Harry straightened and in a long, drawn out moment looked every wizard and witch in the face. He studied them and his lips became a tighter and tighter line drawn across his face. "The future looks quite a bit brighter now, doesn't it? All filled with light and laughter and life." He turned slightly and motioned at Snape, "Just this one little dark mark on your spotless, blemish free existences, though. Sentence him to death, will you? Do any of you ever believe that he was living? Serving the Order of the Phoenix, risking life and sanity in his role as spy for Albus Dumbledore. Is that the life you want to end this morning? Who, come forward, who is going to push him through the veil?"

Silence.

He shook his head at them. "You've got it all figured out, have you?" 

Fudge leapt to his feet and his voice was tremulous, "I will not allow these proceedings" he pointed an accusing finger at Harry, "this Wizengamot, to become your own personal testimonial to Albus Dumbledore and," he was spluttering now, "his Order of the Phoenix. Where did that Order get him in the end? Where?" Cornelius Fudge was actually smirking, but his lower lip trembled visibly.

Harry's mouth fell open. Then snapped shut. His eyes narrowed. "Where did the Order of the Phoenix get Albus Dumbledore?" he whispered, his voice tinged with horror. "You ask me what the Order of the Phoenix did for Dumbledore?" Now he was roaring like an injured beast, "What did the Order of the Phoenix do for you? And you? And you? And your children? And your children's children?"

"With all due respect, your Honour." Hermione's voice rang out like a tolled bell. She sounded anything but respectful, yet she commanded the attention of the courtroom. They turned as if one creature from the specter of Harry Potter. "Professor Snape cannot speak of Headmaster Dumbledore's death. He has taken a magical vow of silence."

Fudge stared at her, mouth agape. Then he looked back to Harry, then back to Hermione, his face contorting, "What? What are you talking about, Miss Granger? What is a magical vow of silence? I've never heard of such a thing." He moved closer to Percy. "Do not stretch our patience here, young lady, you will find that we will show no tolerance for insubordination."

"Albus devised a modified Fidelius in the hopes that it would keep him from being martyred. Severus, I and Harry allowed the spell to be cast upon us."

Murmurs and whispers rippled through the courtroom. Snape eyed the young woman with a look of exhaustion etched upon his face. She turned slowly, away from Fudge, away from the eyes apprising her, away from Harry and faced him. 


	4. Four

I am thinking of a chrysalis and how the butterfly breaks free. 

I 

am 

nearly 

gone. 

But in the delirium of my death, I see Severus unfurl his wings.

I

dissolve

into

the

dream.

The nymphal skin remains.

~***~

Hermione closed her eyes and swayed on her feet. She was going to pass out, felt it drop upon her like a dark, wet cloth flung over her face. Her knees buckled and she fell into her most cherished memory. _In Severus's arms, the night before Dumbledore's murder, before the forever defeat of Voldemort. Before the world diminished outside of her skin and the universe expanded inside of her womb. _

That morning, in the bath, she had ticked off days on each one of her fingers. She was pregnant with his child. 

A shout in the Wizengamot, from Snape, "Hermione!" He was on his feet, lunging towards her, his hands useless behind his back. Two wizards hit him with a curse, bringing him down, his face hitting hard on the stone floor. He left consciousness, swirling down, down, down into the memory of their shared grief turned passion, their year of simmering attraction brought to a boil in the fire of Albus's sacrifice. If he had been conscious he would have recognized the waking dream. But he was not conscious and his dark blood leaked from out of a wound in his temple.


	5. Five

Hermione had given me the portkey, his spectacles, and she whispered into my ear that I would know when to use it. And I did know. How? I cannot explain it. I knew. It was as though he were ripped from me, from inside of me, he was torn out of my life. The love that was a pupa in my heart, the secret love we shared, burst open and I felt him leave. The pain of it brought me to my knees and I literally left my body, my heart flew out of my mouth in search of its mate. I wailed and ripped at my robes, I tore at my hair. I beat the floor upon which I lay. _Oh, gods, Albus! Albus! Albus! I do not know if I am strong enough. I do not know! _ But of course, I had to be strong enough and I was. Just enough. I stood and brought his spectacles out of my robe pocket where I had felt at them all morning.

I portkeyed to where he lay. 

I see him there, his body broken, beaten, pummeled. A fetal comma on the blood-soaked ground. My mentor, my lover, my soul's mate. And I know that in this horror, it is easier this way, I could not have agreed to it, could not have been a part of it before this point. And he knew that. 

Severus and Hermione and Harry are the only living human beings in this awful place. _Who is left standing in an abattoir? _

I bend to him and feel my knees give and I fall upon his body.

Then the aurors appear. Harry and Hermione help me to stand. And I see an auror use his fists to beat Severus down to one knee and he will not give. He has both hands on the ground and will not give. The other auror walks behind him and kicks his leg out and Severus is laying in the bone, blood and bile of others. I squeeze my eyes shut tightly, reach for Harry and Hermione's hands, entwine their fingers in my own. We close our eyes and apparate with Albus's body back to his beloved Hogwarts. They can come for us there. We are taking him home.

~***~

The door to the Wizengamot flew open and Hogwarts' Headmistress Minerva McGonangall walked into the courtroom with a slow grace that seemed to mock the very hinges of the door. Her silver grey hair fell in waves down her back. Rimless spectacles sat low upon her nose and over the tops of them she looked from Hermione to Severus, both on the ground. Arthur and Ron were kneeling beside the girl, Harry casting a quiet healing spell beside the man. Minerva cast her narrowed gaze up into the shadowed benches lining the wall to just under the arched ceiling. She looked back down at the Minister and his Undersecretary. 

She closed her eyes slowly, as if in great pain.

Severus was climbing to his feet, his hands still bound behind him. Harry had a hand circling his upper arm and was steadying him. The man looked over to where the young woman was being helped back to her feet with Arthur on one side and Ron on the other. They looked upon each other. With deliberate steps they brushed past Harry and Arthur and Ron and came face to face with one another. He leaned his head down and she lifted her face up. He rested his forehead against hers.

The Wizengamot exploded into sound. An atonal collapse. Words and snatches of words, whispers and murmurs, shouts and throat clearings crescendoed off the walls and the ceiling and the floor. Fudge appeared to be shouting into the cacophonic wind, he could not be heard. His words lost.

Minerva walked to where Severus and Hermione stood encircled in silence. She held out a hand to Harry and he took her hand in his and made the step closer to the two lovers. Minerva shook out her wand and released Snape's bound hands. She tucked the wand into a robe pocket and held her hand out to him. He grasped it tightly in his own and reached down to take hold of Hermione's hand. She reached for Harry. They stood together, heads bent. 

In a shimmer of black and yellow, the four of them disapparated. Together.


	6. End

She was dreaming of pain. A gaping, splitting wounding. Pain so sharp that it was flaying the skin from off her bones. She had her eyes shut tightly against the stripping bereavement of it.

"Hermione," whispered Severus into her ear. "Hermione."

There was a refreshing firmness against her back; he had slipped onto their bed, behind her. He was crouched on his haunches, his knees tight at her hips, his arms under her breasts, over the heaving belly. He mouthed her ear, she could feel his beard against her neck and she leaned back into him. "Yes," he whispered, "You can do this."

"Hermione," Poppy's voice was low and melodious, but commanding, "It's time to birth this baby."

She was molting sweat. She squinted her eyes open, reached down both her hands and felt the baby's head pushing its way out of her body. This was the source of the pain. This child's birthing. 

She felt fingers join her own, pressing her flesh back, around the baby's head, she pushed and a scream tore itself out of her throat. The child emerged into her hands

"That's alright. You go right ahead and scream, dear," Poppy was helping lift the infant onto her belly. Then Severus's hands were there and together they held the little body firmly folded to her breasts.

She looked down and saw their child curled tightly inside their cupped hands and she wept.

~***~

A candle flickered on the bedside table. The bedroom door left cracked open, light and the low voices of Poppy and Minerva filtered into the darkness. Hermione lay against the pillows, Severus asleep beside her, the babe nested into the crook of her arm, between them. Asleep. She knew soon she would be asleep as well. She looked down at the small face of the child, her nipple spilling out of the open mouth. With a tentative finger she traced the tiny ear, smoothed at the fine locks of hair. Just hours old.

"I am so pleased you're here," she whispered. The baby stirred.

"So very pleased that you're here," she bent and kissed the pate, "again."


End file.
